Raspberry Pi booting issues? Prop... code?

[nooby]

Not sure what title to give it.

I link and copy a text and that will explain it.
suggest correct title after reading that text

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221#comment-34980

If the source was open, it would mean people could unlawfully enable all of the extra silicon on the chip without paying a license pretty trivially.
Reply ↓

André on October 24, 2012 at 7:09 pm said:

Well, a 2-stage bootloader would be nice – 1st propriatory stage initialize videocore and codec licenses, 2nd OSS stage boots actual kernel and enables cross-hardware Linux distros. Any healthy linux distro manages kernel version upgrade itself, and OSS bootloader is a must for that.
Reply ↓
psergiu on October 24, 2012 at 8:45 pm said:

You can do this right now if you replace kernel.img with a suitable ARM bootloader. This sourcecode resease allows creating one that would display a graphical menu.

so part of the boodloader is secret?
Not that we talk about code for Grub4dos much either
but what does this mean here? The hardware companies
wants to protect that one don't activate things one have not paid for?

Could that be code for activating VGA output instead of HDMI output?

[jamesbond]

so part of the boodloader is secret?

Yes.
[/quote]

Not that we talk about code for Grub4dos much either
but what does this mean here? The hardware companies
wants to protect that one don't activate things one have not paid for?

Nothing new. Mainframes and minis from comes with all sorts of stuff inside, but they only get activated if you pay the (hardware) license. Why? Its cheaper to make identical products. In early 2000 high-end graphics cards may share some the same chips with low-end cards, but with some features disabled. There were at least some software hacks to re-enable them and you would have a $100 card perform (almost) identically with a $500 card.
There were also talks before that (at one time in the future) Intel will ship identical multi-core CPUs across all price ranges, but with some cores disabled and/or frequency-limited. If you want to improve the performance, just pay the license and Intel will enable them via secret microcode update, instead of you having to physically replace the chip. It doesn't happen yet, as far as I know, though.

The only problem with that (and especially the link you posted above) is that they claim the Pi graphics driver is "fully open" and then they mocked out the primary developer of the open-source lima graphics driver (for ARM), when he exposed that there was "nothing being opened". Not education friendly, I would say.

Could that be code for activating VGA output instead of HDMI output?

Who knows?

[nooby]

The only problem with that (and especially the link you posted above) is that they claim the Pi graphics driver is "fully open" and then they mocked out the primary developer of the open-source lima graphics driver (for ARM), when he exposed that there was "nothing being opened". Not education friendly, I would say.

Oh? Thanks JamesBond. idg.se our version of PCWorld.com told us
that great news from RPi so ... ? I just trusted it.

Anyway. The reason I don't buy one is that I am no programmer
so would rather buy Via or some other brand that have VGA output
and with microSD card instead of standard SD.

But I am in no hurry. I love that RPi is fan less so no sound from it

But a compromise is to place the noisy Netbook way behind an external
screen in a shelf some yard behind as the cables allow it and then
the noise from the fant is almost bearable.

Cheap way to get a silent computer